The proposed research is a study of the evolution of pediatrics in the U.S. from 1920 to the present. The investigation will focus on the process of professional specialization and the impact of this process on the delivery of health services to children. In addition to providing an analytic description of the organizational growth and consolidation of a medical specialty, the study will involve consideration of the following hypotheses. (1) Built into pediatrics as it was institutionalized were certain tensions and strains having to do with the nature of pediatrics as a field of interest and with requirements imposed by the emerging structure of specialization within medicine. These tensions resulted in major realignments in the specialty's orientation to the problems of child health. (2) Investigation of changing patterns of collaboration between the federal government and the specialty will reveal progressively greater influence on the part of organized pediatrics in determining national child health policy. (3) The unfolding dynamics of professional specialization in pediatrics and new forms in the specialty's partnership with the federal government have had long-term documentable consequences for what types of problems are treated by pediatricians, how these problems are defined and how services for children are organized. The investigation will make sure of a wide range of data including written documents and information obtained from consultations with experts in the field of child health. Analytic methods used will be drawn from scholarship in the field of historical sociology.